With the advent of the mobile broadband era, a dream of “surfing on the wireless internet anytime and anywhere” is gradually coming true. The 3rd Generation (3G)/Long Term Evolution (LTE) brings much hope to people, and is greatly improved in the mobile communication rate compared with the 2nd Generation (2G) technology so as to be enough to improve the life style of people. People not only can enjoy the communication service of calling anytime and anywhere but also can surf on the internet, download music, play games on the internet, watch video, chat online etc. anytime and anywhere. In conclusion, everything is mobile in the internet now, and the era of mobile internet has come.
As a mature and highly-recognized wireless broadband access technology, the WLAN is an effective supplement to the fixed broadband access and the mobile data service. For the fixed broadband access, the WLAN provides wireless extension of the last 100 m access, so as to bring much convenience to users and implement the mobility of the fixed broadband access. For the mobile data service, the WLAN can effectively relieve the broadband and network load pressure of a cellular network at a hotspot region and effectively reduce the deployment cost, and provides a user with a good high-speed mobile internet experience and highlights the advantages of the cellular network.
In term of the development history of the WLAN architecture, the home WLAN is developed at first, which does not need to consider operation and management and adopts FAT Access Point (FAT AP), then it is developed to an enterprise WLAN, which has a simple network management requirement, and finally, it is developed to a carrier-class network, which is complex in network structure and large in network size and sets the operation and management as the first task.
By integrating the fixed broadband, the cellular network and the WLAN, the problems of internet convenience and bandwidth are solved for users and the user experience is improved greatly, but it is necessary to consider the new characteristics and new problem of the WLAN carrier-class network prospectively. Compared with the home network and the enterprise WLAN, the carrier-class WLAN has the following problems to be solved when deployed by an operator.
(1) integration of the cellular network and the WLAN: uniform authentication/uniform charging, user policy control and management, carrier-class WLAN equipment and dual-mode terminal, switching and flow migration between heterogeneous networks.
(2) fine service assurance: flow centralized control, secure access and seamless switching of flow.
(3) low-cost construction: centralized deployment and uniform management of Access Control (AC), carrier-class high-capacity and high-performance AC, and high-reliability and high-capacity intelligent AP.
(3) uniform operation and maintenance: management of a large number of APs, uniform management of the WLAN and bearer equipment, quick deployment, and simple operation and maintenance.
With the development of the mobile internet, the mobile data service has an increasingly amount of users and flow, accordingly, a lot of new topics are emerging. For example, how to guarantee user experience of a VIP client and provide a differentiated service, how to rationally control the long-time occupancy of radio resources of an instant message service, such as QQ and Fetion, how to effectively control the user who pays monthly and is not limited in bandwidth not to affect their user experience obviously but to reduce the influence on the usage experience of other users in a specific period, how to ensure a high-value user, such as stream media, and how to manage and control a low-value service, such as P2P.
In the WLAN network, operators cannot monitor and rationally allocate WLAN network resources and effectively control the network serviceability due to absence of necessary policy control and management mechanism, which is not convenient to improve the user experience. Therefore, a policy control and management mechanism is needed in the WLAN network to provide finer service flow management for users based on the user subscription, thereby guaranteeing the user experience.
In view of the requirements and problems above, there is no effective solution currently.